George

It was a relatively short drive of 1.5 hours from Plett to George, which we broke up further by stopping at Knysna’s East Head cafe which was spectacular for its view and the food was pretty good too. There is an outdoor children’s area of blocks and chalkboards. We had to wait about 10 minutes before a table was ready, so we went for a short stroll to the heads.

The other place we stopped at was Timberlake Village which was a cute kid friendly group of shops with an outdoor playground. There is a fairy shop with a 5 Rand entry to a fairy garden which was something a little different.

We stayed at a lovely place called Farmlands B & B and were met by the lovely Vanessa who went out of the way to make us feel at home. The accommodation was a smallish one bedroom apartment with a common kitchen, dining and outdoor area. We stayed here for 3 nights and enjoyed a lovely home cooked breakfast every morning. There was a (non fenced) swimming pool on site, some dogs, a fig tree and horses in the next door paddock. It was located a 15 minute drive to the main part of George, but around the corner from our main attraction in George – Redberry Farm.

Redberry Farm is a kiddie heaven for all ages. A free playground got us started before we bought a container and went a bit nuts picking strawberries to fill it. The bunnies were cute to watch and that’s about all the entertainment our kids could handle. The maze and the paddle boats were a bit beyond them. The gift shop was nice to browse through and the cafe had lots of strawberry related items on the menu for lunch.

Apart from the farm, we didn’t have any must dos and thought we would see what came up. George Botanical Gardens had a small entrance fee, and while I will say it was nice, it was nothing spectacular (wait until Kirstenbosch in Cape Town!) However, it did give us an opportunity to have a nice picnic, kick a ball and be a little silly. And let’s face it, we all need some of those days.

The next day was a beautiful weather day which called for a beach. Harolds Bay was closer to us than Wilderness beach and what a wonderful little discovery! Besides having the compulsory sand and water, Harolds Bay had some fabulous rock pools where we saw starfish, crabs, octopus hiding under rocks anemones, and some other sea creatures which I do not have the vocabulary to describe! A unique experience for me, who lives in Sydney with beaches at my doorstep.

Vanessa, our host had told us about a chicken farm called Red Barn which was close by and she buys her local organic Shakespeare-read eggs. We took a little detour with the thought of educating our children about where eggs come from (the good ones, where the chickens beaks are not razed and they are not in jail.) After some windy up and down roads, we arrived to be greeted by a friendly Kiwi who was more than happy to show our children the hens, and even let Miss N collect an egg. It is not a typical tourist place, which made it even better as there weren’t hoards of people around. Other fun things about the farm is the odd emu that is at the front – not that the emu is odd, but it’s rather odd for an emu of all animals to be living on a chicken farm in South Africa! I also have this farm to thank for allowing me to try shitake mushroom biltong. At long last, this vegetarian got to try biltong!

Outeniqua Transport Museum was on my list of things to do, so we did it. We didn’t do the power van trip, mainly because we weren’t organised enough/grey unpromising clouds/the thought of being stuck with needy whiny kids for 2 hours in a closed space for fun 😉 The transport museum itself was not really my thing. My daughter is not overly enthused about transport unless she gets to sing the wheels on the bus. But it did entertain her for a while, climbing up and down off trains. And my son, well, he doesn’t get a say in any of it anyway as he is only 8 months old. Sorry.

One more thing about George. Panarotti. I’m a little late to understanding this Temple, as I believe it is a chain of Italian restaurants across South Africa and abroad. We stumbled across this place while looking for another restaurant, but quickly chose Panarottis because of it’s awesome indoor jungle gym and child minder. The food was pretty average, but did I mention the child minder?!!

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